[SunRescue] How FAST is a SUN IPC

[Paul Theodoropoulos]

>   1) I don't much like SysV.  Pure personal preference here.

no argument.

>    2) Source code isn't free.

Not being an OS hacker, I've never needed it. Have run Solaris 
servers since 1995 and have never needed to hack the OS (besides 
the rare fiddling around with things via adb, none of which were 
strictly necessary.)

>    3) My favorite SPARC OS, NetBSD/sparc, kicks its ass in terms 
> of:
>      a) Performance, especially networking.

does anyone have any metrics on this? I've heard this for years, 
but haven't seen quantifiable evidence. Note that I'm not saying 
that it might not be true.

>      b) "Modernness" (native ipv6, built-in raid, etc etc etc)

well, solaris 8 has both, plus LDAP support, and PAM, and various 
other goodies.. And I think an argument could be made that SysVr4 
is more "modern" than BSD in some regards, but that gets into the 
historical roots and branches of our beloved Unix.

>      c) Hardware support (when Sun's marketing department 
> arbitrarily
>                           decides that they no longer want to 
> sell a
>                           particular board, they deny ever having 
> made
>                           it and remove the drivers from Solaris)

perhaps. never been an issue for me.

>      d) Platform independence.  Some of us run more than just Sun
>         hardware on our networks.  My home network is a mixture 
> of
>         several different platforms, each chosen, built, and 
> tuned
>         to its specific application.  With two exceptions...SGIs
>         running IRIX (because that's what they do) and a Cray 
> running
>         Unicos (because...well, that's what they do), they ALL 
> run
>         NetBSD, regardless of whether they're a sparc, an alpha, 
> a
>         Cobalt MIPS box, or even one lowly 
> PentiumIII.  Consistency,
>         both in terms of environment and in terms of performance,
>         gives me a woodie the size of a California redwood.  And 
> I
>         settle for nothing less.  The consistency, that is.

that's fine.

>      e) Reliability.  The shit Just Works.  And in those rare
>         occasions in which it doesn't, I get better and faster
>         support out of the NetBSD mailing lists than I EVER could
>         out of Sun, even when I was buying hardware for one of 
> the
>         largest commercial customers they've ever had.

i'd say the same for Solaris - The shit Just Works. It runs and 
runs and runs and runs. Absolutely boring uptime and availability, 
currently nearing 'five-nines' for my main servers. The most 
support i've ever needed from sun - *ever*, in about six years of 
running sun/solaris servers - is access to their patch page. And 
for anything else, comp.unix.solaris provides near 'realtime' 
access to answers.

>    4) Software support by the free software community.  Like it 
> or
>       not, the software that *really* runs most of the Internet
>       (with the exception of Cisco router firmware) is free stuff
>       like GNU goodies, Apache, sendmail, etc...not the 
> commercial
>       profitware that Sun (and others) push in magazine ads for
>       newbie admins to drool over as they sit in front of their
>       little Windows boxes wearing their little ties and 
> following
>       their little rules.  Now, admittedly, it's getting much 
> better
>       with 7 and 8...but in earlier Solaris releases, try getting
>       ANYTHING to compile correctly.  Their headers and libraries
>       were so damn bastardized I'm surprised they shipped a 
> working
>       "ls" with some of those releases.

perhaps. but i don't see that as much of an OS issue. I've been 
running gcc and the rest of the gnu kids the entire time i've been 
running solari boxes, and with the extremely rare exception, have 
never had any trouble compiling or running anything. The sun 
compiler isn't part of the OS. That brings up a bit of a logical 
conundrum, sure, but with gcc always having been available, it's 
moot. I can run BIND and qmail and apache and NcFTPd and etc on 
solaris/sun, no impediments. For servers, i don't see any 
impediments.

>    5) I don't like the way Solaris, in its early NEARLY 
> COMPLETELY
>       UNUSABLE FORM around the early 2.x releases, was utterly 
> FORCED
>       on the Sun user community by Sun MarketingSystems.  During
>       that time, I was responsible for nearly a thousand sun
>       machines, some of which just weren't supported by Solaris.
>       Sun pulled the rug out from under me by discontinuing
>       maintenance on their perfectly acceptable and very popular 
> OS,
>       forcing me to steal a copy of the source code and continue
>       its maintenence my damn self.  We had a great deal of 
> SunOS4
>       experience, and we had VERY finely-tuned machines and
>       networks...pouring an entirely different OS on the thing 
> would
>       have put Digex out of business before we ever went public.

that's fine, though more of a historical argument. I admit I 'came 
along' after that, so never suffered through it. But it has no real 
bearing on the current usability/performance of Solaris. Anyone who 
went through that interval while in production though does have my 
sympathy!

>   Now, I admit, I've warmed up to Solaris quite a bit as of 
> releases 7
>and 8.  But I've already switched to an OS that didn't suck in the
>first place.  Too late.

totally cool. just like editor wars, my response is always this: 
"there is, indeed, one true, correct, best 
[editor/os/platform/game/whatever] in the whole wide world: the one 
that works best for you".

>   I'm not anti-Linux either...I think it's ridiculous that 
> they've
>[all but against Linus' wishes] tried to port the damn thing to
>everything under the sun (so to speak) but I do like the OS for 
>the
>most part.  It's got personality.  But until you hand me a CDROM
>containing the source code for Solaris8, don't you dare call it
>"free".

Well, i did put it in quotes. Even just the "free" executable 
install costs a chunk of change for the 'media' and 'shipping' and 
'taxes'. but with that one copy of media i can install it on all 
the machines i want till the cows come home (though that's been an 
implicit thang for a long while with sun, they really didn't care 
too much if you 'reused' your media over and over without paying 
for new licenses).

Access to the source code of an OS is an Open Source issue. If I 
can run/install Solaris 8 on all the boxes I want with no extra 
fees, then the OS is indeed 'free'. but we're digressing into 
philosophy.

>   Another point...I make a LOT of money with SS1/SS1+/SS2 
> machines.
>Solaris8 won't even run on those machines, will it?  Arbitrarily
>dropping support for hardware that is older but STILL USEFUL just 
>to
>try to force people to buy more hardware is BOGUS.

but is it arbitrary, or related to architectural issues, and 
support of those architectures? will microsoft provide support if 
you try to run win2000 on a 386? I don't think so. sometimes the 
support is dropped in order to maintain a lower threshold for 
reasonable performance.


>   Anyway...I hope I've given you a few points to think 
> about.  It's
>different for each of us, our companies (and home networks) all 
>work
>in different ways...this is where my experience has brought me.

amen, brother. Whatever Works for You, bottom line!

-----------------------------------
Paul Theodoropoulos   paul at atgi.net
Senior Unix Systems Administrator
Advanced Telcom Group, Inc.
Santa Rosa, California
Work: http://www.atgi.net
Play: http://www.anastrophe.com